


Nothing More Horrific Than A Hunt

by Zlu_and_Luff



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-05
Updated: 2016-03-05
Packaged: 2018-05-24 23:38:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6171301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zlu_and_Luff/pseuds/Zlu_and_Luff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short glimpse into the life of a shield-carrying huntsman living in the Forbidden Woods near Yharnam.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing More Horrific Than A Hunt

**Author's Note:**

> Written solo by Zlu.
> 
> Jakub and Marcin are Polish names just like Henryk and Iosefka. They are read respectively as YA-koob and MAr-chin.  
> Kuba (KOO-bah) is a short form of Jakub as used between friends.

This hour of the night a man should be home and in bed. Not outside in the drizzle with a torch in his hand, pacing restlessly between the trees.

Jakub shifted, tired of holding his crass wooden shield up. The torch was a lighter burden, but his left arm hurt regardless. It had been hurting for days. Something wasn’t right with it, but there was nothing to be done. The village physician was one of the first unfortunates who had succumbed to the Scourge. Now the beast was dead and his house shunned. Jakub wondered idly if there could be sedatives in there. Perhaps if the others got distracted with something he could take a peek.

He had trouble sleeping. The pain, fear and hunger kept him awake for long hours whenever he tried to have some rest. Perhaps that was the source of his malady. These were dark times. The night was the time of the hunt, and the day... it never seemed to come.

There was a murmur among his companions. Two shadows approached from the side of the village. The hunters peered into the misty darkness. A familiar bandaged shape stepped into the firelight and the tension eased. Ebenezer and his brothers had come to relieve them. Their watch was done.

Jakub murmured a few words of gratitude and shambled away into the darkness. His hair and clothes were damp. So were the bandages on his face. He fixed them half-heartedly with his healthy right hand. The last thing he needed now was to trip over a root and fall into mud. It was, of course, far from the worst that could happen. Some part of him knew there could be beasts lurking in the forest, but he was too tired to be afraid. Death at least would release him from this nightmare.

A twig snapped and Jakub backed away, shielding himself and holding up his torch. What drowsiness had been washing over him was lifted. His heart slammed itself wildly against his rib cage. A tall lanky figure approached. It bore its own torch and for a moment the light blinded Jakub. Through the gaps in his wooden shield he saw the bloodied metal of a long curved blade twinkling in the firelight. The stranger crossed the distance between them before Jakub could do more than shrink in fear.

A loud huff.

Jakub looked out from behind his shield.

“Oh, thank heavens, it is just you, Marcin. You frightened the breath outta me,” Jakub told the tall hunched creature with dark skin and twisted horns.

Marcin did not respond. Instead he turned around and marched back to an old shack nearby, grunting as he went. Jakub trotted after him.

“It is no fault of yours. I should have been paying attention. There are beasts everywhere. Speaking of beasts, you shouldn’t be out here alone.”

Not even a huff for a reply. Jakub felt a pang of sadness. Marcin had not talked to him in days. He had his reasons to be offended, but considering their circumstances Jakub had hoped they would have left the incident behind them by now. Clearly he was wrong to assume, and Marcin was still angry with him.

“Please, return to the village with me.”

A loud growl.

“Or alone if you prefer.” Jakub averted his eyes. 

Marcin passed him, like he wasn’t there. It was quite hurtful to ignore another that way. Jakub sighed. 

“You should go get some rest, you’ve been up all night.”

No response.

The taller man kept pacing restlessly down the small hill and back to the hut and down again. 

Jakub fidgeted, cold and uncomfortable in his damp clothes. He suddenly noticed Marcin’s shirt was undone. Gone, actually. His coat was torn and so were his trousers. And where were his shoes? The man was an outright mess. Jakub felt a dull ache in his heart. What had they come to, all of them? Desperate, mangy like stray dogs, going in circles, waiting for the worst to happen. He needed those sedatives before he joined this barechested march.

Sedatives.

“Marcin, stay here, I’ll… I’ll go get something.”

Jakub put down the shield that weighed him down and hurried into the village. 

As he walked past the remains of the stone fence and gate the hubbub of the village drowned out the threatening sounds of the forest. The men were repairing the traps and debating whether the pits in the ground were to have spikes at the bottom. Jakub headed for the passage that would lead him to the mill. Corpses of slain beasts still lay on the muddy floor, hideous in the light of his torch. But he paid them no mind. His thoughts were preoccupied by what lay ahead. The condemned house he needed to sneak into without being seen. Who knew what the others would think if they saw him pawing in the scourge victim’s things. That he was another beast perhaps. He could not risk that.

When he walked out of the cave he was greeted with firelight and voices of tired angry men. Eadric, sabre in hand, was giving orders and trying to organize a proper defense, but the others seemed to pay him no mind. For once Jakub wished they actually listened to the pompous lout. Maybe then he would have had a chance. Instead the villagers were bored and looking anywhere else but at Eadric. Jakub’s heart sank. If he so much as came close to the house their eyes would be instantly on him. Some were eyeing him already out of sheer boredom. He had to think of something.

A quiet splashing reached his ears. Jakub turned. A putrid mutilated corpse crawled towards him through the mud. Its legs were hacked off and it dragged itself forward on its arms, a sad filthy rotten thing. Jakub stepped away from the edge of the muddy water and his would-be assailant sank back into his watery grave. Now that the corpse had shifted something glinted in the mud behind it. Something large, something metallic, on wheels half-sunken in mud. Jakub lifted the torch above his head, squinting. 

A cannon. What was a cannon doing in this backwater hamlet? Where were the cannons when Central Yharnam descended into madness? Jakub’s Yharnamite sensibilities were severely wounded by this oversight. Did they have some heretical fool in their midst? A hunter of the Church perhaps?

Did the others know?

Jakub’s mouth dropped open. 

He hurried to the group of idling men.

“... And you two, you should stand guard on that there roof,” Eadric directed. “I’ll keep watch over all of ya-”

“Did you know we have a cannon?” Jakub asked loudly.

The idle murmurs of the crowd seized. All eyes were on him. Jakub’s stomach sank, but he stared boldly at Eadric, who had also stopped talking.

“What says you, city dweller?” he asked.

“There’s a cannon in the mud with the restless dead.” Jakub waved a hand in the general direction of his find. “It just stands there, abandoned.”

The men looked about themselves surprised.

“That oughta explain them cannonballs in the mill,” one of them remarked.

“So there’s cannonballs too?” Jakub grasped onto that straw. “How fortunate! We should retrieve it at once! A shot from a cannon like that should be enough to put down even the fiercest of beasts!”

The spirits in the crowd rose, as men regained vigor at the thought of beasts flying to pieces. 

“The task at hand-” Eadric began angrily.

“Is to get that cannon up that hill, where you could command it from this strategic position, elder Eadric,” Jakub proposed.

The self-proclaimed village elder stared at him for a moment processing the suggestion, then puffed up with pride he roared “To the cannon!” and led the rest of the invigorated crowd with him downhill. Jakub watched them go, his heart beating wildly. As the villagers focused on the crawling dead and their trophy, Jakub put out his torch and crept aside into the shadow of the abandoned house. Luckily, although, some of it was boarded up, the shack was falling apart and slipping in was not so hard. 

What greeted him inside was far less inspiring. Shattered glass and pottery was scattered on the floor among broken shelves and torn books. Jakub crouched, moving the broken glass around with his torch to see if any of the vials had survived. Then he looked through the shelves nailed to the walls. Nothing there either. He could hear the men outside grunting with effort as they rolled the old cannon uphill. He had to hurry. 

He tiptoed to the other side of the room to check a sack hanging on the wall, but found nothing but lots of tubing for blood ministration. He swore under his breath and crept back to the pile of broken wood and glass. From the noises outside the men were reaching the top of the hill. He had to leave before they were done and looked down on the street below or, heavens forbid, tested the cannon on the very house he was in. He looked out through the hole in the wall he had used to enter the house. The men on the hill were standing in a circle, focused on the weapon they had just retrieved. Eadric was yelling something ecstatically.

Jakub tossed one last glance at the destroyed room, and then his gaze stopped on a vial lying in a far corner. It was whole. He darted for the vial, pocketed it without looking and rushed back towards the exit. He slipped on wet floor boards and lost his balance, slamming heavily into the rickety wall. The rotten wood gave way, and Jakub fell out of the shack and onto the street with a crash of breaking boards. He scrambled to his feet, ready to run for his life.

The men on the hill didn’t even glance his way, still utterly absorbed by his lucky find.

Jakub breathed out with relief and trying not to let his knees shake headed back to where he’d left Marcin. In the privacy of the cavernous sideways passage, he pulled the vial out of his pocket. He smiled when he found it intact and full. The label written in a hardly intelligible hand told him his venture was a success.

With a lighter heart and the smile lingering in the corners of his mouth he lit his torch on a bonfire in the village and headed out to where he left Marcin.

“Marcin, I got you something. It’s a sedative. Might help you rest if it’s the sleeplessness that you’re struggling with.” Jakub offered the small bottle to the other man.

Marcin stopped pacing and turned to him. Something stirred in his previously vacant expression, but he did not take the vial.

“I remember back in Yharnam you often had trouble sleeping. And I-... I’m sorry for the things I said. If I had insulted you. You are a dear friend, and I should have… left it at that. But please, accept this as an apology.” Jakub looked up at his friend.

Marcin said nothing.

Jakub’s eyebrows furrowed. “Please, take it. If you need anything else, if there is anything I can do to gain your forgiveness, just say it. Please, speak to me. It’s been so long, I can’t take this silence any longer.”

The other man bowed slightly, bringing his face closer to Jakub’s as if he was trying to see him better. It was of course nonsense with both of them holding torches. But something passed over Marcin’s face, like a shadow of emotion, a lingering memory.

A blade sunk deep into Jakub’s back, going out through his chest. The vial of sedative fell out of his hand and shattered on the rocks. Blood splattered over Marcin’s face. Jakub tried to gasp for air, but his chest was torn open and he fell on the wet ground already dead.

“KuuUUbaaa!” roared the blood-splattered beast, going into a frenzy.

But the hunter was good and quick and drove the holy blade deep into its vile flesh, silencing the garbled beastly cry.


End file.
